“The Altar of the Dead” is a tale about a man who lives more
with what he calls “his Dead” than he does with the living.
Published in the collection Terminations in 1895, the tale
anticipates the themes of obsession, the double and self-haunting
in Henry James’s two later masterpieces “The Beast in the Jungle”
(1903) and “The Jolly Corner” (1908). While “The Altar of the Dead”
can be read as one of James’s multitude of “quasi-supernatural”
tales in which an unseen reality has precedence over the material
world, as Clifton Fadiman has noted “the tale is crowded, not with
terror, but with love” (259).

Having lost his fianc&…

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Citation:
Pooler, Mhairi Catriona. "“The Altar of the Dead”".
The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2009
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1615, accessed 03 March 2015.]

1615“The Altar of the Dead”3Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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